Unusually, almost all of the music to this opera was completed before Valerian Shirkov was brought on to write its libretto, and it features one of the earliest uses of the whole tone scale in the classical repertoire. Rossini's Marriage of Figaro is recalled by a rondo from act two of this work, which later sees the hero perform one of the most striking examples of operatic beard-pilfering. This work's aria "Blizok uzh chas torzhestva mayevo" is song by (*) Farlaf, a minor villain, shortly after a sword and a giant stone head are presented to 
Unusually, almost all of the music to this opera was completed before Valerian Shirkov was brought on to write its libretto, and it features one of the earliest uses of the whole tone scale in the classical repertoire. Rossini's Marriage of Figaro is recalled by a rondo from act two of this work, which later sees the hero perform one of the most striking examples of operatic beard-pilfering. This work's aria "Blizok uzh chas torzhestva mayevo" is song by (*) Farlaf, a minor villain, shortly after a sword and a giant stone head are presented to one title character; the head is later revealed to be the brother of this opera's antagonist, the sorcerer Chernomor. Based on a Pushkin poem, for 10 points, name this follow-up to A Life for the Tsar, a Glinka opera about two lovers from Russian folklore.
Unusually, almost all of the music to this opera was completed before Valerian Shirkov was brought on to write its libretto, and it features one of the earliest uses of the whole tone scale in the classical repertoire.
{Ruslan} and {Lyudmila}